Steric Sea Level Variability over the Red Sea

Turki Alraddadi, Department of Marine Physics, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi ArabiaFollow

Abstract

The current paper analyzes the steric sea level (SSL) variability over the Red Sea (RS) and linked it with climate modes namely, North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and East Atlantic West Russian (EAWR) patterns using a reanalysis dataset. Long-term (1993--2015) profile temperature and salinity data acquired from Simple Ocean Data Assimilation (SODA) was used to compute the SSL. The results show that the SSL is out of phase comparing to the total sea level, which may reduce fluctuations of water level within the sea. Furthermore, it accounts for only 10% of the total sea level variations. The first and second Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) patterns of SSL has been investigated and show about 55% and 18% as average for all season, respectively. The relation with East Atlantic West Russian (EAWR) and North Atlantic oscillation (NAO) has been investigated through (SST) since we observed nonsignificant results from the direct correlation between the SSL and those climate modes. The EAWR and the NAO were found to have a considerable impact on the RS circulation, mainly on the northern Red Sea and in winter. Due to the shortage of in-situ data and the low accuracy of the available reanalysis dataset, the use of sensitivity experiments with a regional coupled model is highly encouraged.

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Recommended Citation

Alraddadi, Turki (2025) "Steric Sea Level Variability over the Red Sea," Journal of King Abdulaziz University: Marine Science: Vol. 35: No. 1, Article 5.